Chìchéng jí 赤城集
Chì-chéng Anthology by 林表民
About the work
An 18-juǎn regional anthology of Táizhōu 台州 (the Sòng prefecture often called Chìchéng 赤城 after the mountain of that name) prose, compiled by Lín Biǎomín 林表民 (zì Féngjí, of Línhǎi) as a continuation of Chén Qíqìng 陳耆卿’s Chìchéng zhì (Táizhōu gazetteer). Lín took jì, zhì, shūzhuàn, míng, lěi, zàn, sòng prose pieces about Táizhōu sites and persons not preserved in the Chén gazetteer and gathered them into the present collection. The book is prefaced by Wú Zǐliáng 吳子良 in Chúnyòu 8 (1248) — the same Wú whose Chìchéng xùzhì xù identifies Lín Biǎomín as zì Féngjí and a sometime DōngLǔ man.
The transmitted text is incomplete. The Míng-period Xiè Duó 謝鐸’s Chìchéng xīnzhì records the Chìchéng jí as 28 juǎn (with a block-print copy in the Imperial Archive); the WYG copy retains only 18 juǎn of prose containing 182 pieces — the 10 juǎn of poetry that Wú Zǐliáng’s preface mentions (“classified together and combined with poetry into a single book”) are entirely lost. So the book is approximately two-thirds of its original juǎn count and an unknown but probably similar fraction of its original textual coverage.
Tiyao
Your servants respectfully submit: the Chìchéng jí in 18 juǎn — edited by Sòng’s Lín Biǎomín. The book contains Wú Zǐliáng’s Chìchéng xùzhì xù, which calls him zì Féngjí; together with the editor of the Tiāntāi qiánjí KR4h0048 biébiān, Lín Biǎomín is the same man, also called a DōngLǔ (East-Lǔ) man — so the lǐguàn (native place) differs from text to text; in fact his ancestors migrated from Qǔfù to Línhǎi, and so the prior native place is mentioned: not a different person.
Biǎomín continued Chén Qíqìng’s Chìchéng zhì (the Táizhōu gazetteer): he took jì, zhì, shūzhuàn, mínglěi, zànsòng prose pieces not preserved in the zhì and gathered them to compose this collection. Before is Wú Zǐliáng’s Chúnyòu 8 (1248) preface, which says “fēnmén huìcuì bìng shī wéi yī” — classified by genre, integrated, and combined with poetry into one whole. But the present text has only 182 pieces of prose and no poetry. Also Míng Xiè Duó’s Chìchéng xīnzhì records the Chìchéng jí in 28 juǎn, with a block-print copy in the Imperial Archive — yet this text has only 18 juǎn. The original probably had 10 juǎn of poetry, lost by the copyists; not a complete text. Reverently submitted, fourth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Editor-in-Chief Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. General Collator Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Date: by Wú Zǐliáng’s Chúnyòu 8 (1248) preface, the compilation is fixed at 1248 — late Southern Sòng under Lǐzōng. The book is one of the last great Sòng regional anthologies before the Mongol conquest.
The principal documentary value is Táizhōu prefectural history. Táizhōu was a culturally distinctive prefecture in the Southern Sòng — host to Mt. Tiāntái 天台, the sacred Tiāntái-school mountain; site of important Tāo-school Daoist tradition; home to the Tāng-poet Hè Zhīzhāng lineage; and home to the Dàoxué figure Chén Qíqìng himself. Lín’s anthology preserves prose by Chén Qíqìng, by his Dàoxué contemporaries, and by earlier writers about the Tiāntái sites and the local cult of the Tiāntái patriarchs. The companion Tiāntāi qiánjí KR4h0048 is the poetry collection; together they constitute Lín’s two-part documentary monument to Táizhōu literary culture.
The book is also a documentary witness to the late Southern-Sòng gazetteer-and-anthology pairing: Lín Biǎomín’s two compilations (the Chìchéng zhì xù and Chìchéng jí) are explicitly a prose-anthology supplement to the prefectural gazetteer; the form was widely adopted in the YuánMíng fǔzhì tradition.
Translations and research
- James M. Hargett, “Local Gazetteers and Local Topography in Sòng Times,” T’oung Pao 82 (1996): 405–442 — discusses the Chì-chéng zhì tradition.
- Joseph Dennis, Writing, Publishing, and Reading Local Gazetteers in Imperial China, 1100–1700 (Harvard Asia Center, 2015) — Táizhōu as a case-study.
- Wáng Dé-yì 王德毅, Sòng-dài fāng-zhì kǎo 宋代方志考 (Taipei, 1968).
- Sūn Yǒng-rú 孫永如, “Tiāntái-shān Sòng-dài fāng-zhì yánjiū,” Zhōngguó dì-fāng-zhì yánjiū 2003.
Other points of interest
The textual problem identified by the SKQS editors — the loss of the 10-juǎn poetry section — is permanent: no later copy preserves the poetry, and modern reconstructions can recover only fragments from cross-references in the Tiāntāi qiánjí, Chìchéng zhì, and other Sòng documents on Táizhōu.
Links
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §53.5.
- ctext